The battle between fitness wearables and coaching company GOQii and Flipkart is fascinating to look at in the context of India's draft e-commerce policy, which sought to give trademark owners greater control over the sale of their products. GOQii has sought to restrict Flipkart from selling its fitness wearables as deep discounts of up to 80%. Vishal Gondal, founder of GOQii tweeted yesterday that the Bombay Civil Court has given an ad-interim order against sellers Retailnet, Tech-connect and Flipkart from selling GOQii products, and notices were issued to Flipkart and (its parent company) Walmart. This case is really important, because if it is found that Flipkart India Pvt Ltd has control over pricing of products on the flipkart.com marketplace, which it claims it doesn't, as a B2B seller to third party entities who sell on Flipkart, then it possibly could be found to be violating India's FDI regulations. https://twitter.com/vishalgondal/status/1133017032117706753?s=19 At the time of filing this report, GOQii products were listed as 'Out of stock' on Flipkart. If the draft e-commerce policy were in operation now, GOQii would be: Notified whenever their trademarked product is uploaded for sale on a marketplace. GOQii would have to register with Flipkart and other marketplaces for this. Be able prevent e-commerce platforms from selling/offering for sale any of their products without prior approval. In case trademark owners choose to opt for this, they would have to undertake to respond to platforms within a certain time limit. In case of specified high value (luxury) goods, cosmetics…
